EAGER: Identifying Barriers and Opportunities for Building SocioTechnical Capital

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This project advances a scientific understanding of how "socio-technical capital" - ties that are created, maintained, or exploited through the use of information and communication technologies - is developed and used across different socioeconomic groups and populations. It is hypothesized that, like other valuable resources, the benefits of computer-mediated opportunities for building socio-technical capital are unequally distributed in society. For example, it appears as if far more effort has gone into building social networking tools and online markets for highly paid professionals (such as LinkedIn) than for handymen or day laborers. And online labor markets that exist for low-skill, low-commitment jobs (such as Amazon Mechanical Turk) do not appear to offer a path toward building socio-technical capital that might lead to more-stable, higher-wage jobs.This project seeks to understand the prospects of tailoring the technologies of social networking tools and online labor markets to meet the needs of specific socio-economic populations, such as populations in Detroit, Michigan, and other cities in economic decline. The project will follow a human-centered approach of contextual inquiry, conducting interviews and focus groups employing a range of "design probes". These probes will examine technologies that currently support the employment process (such as LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, ODesk, TaskRabbit, and Angie's List) as a springboard to identify fundamental barriers to usage, and also to generate ideas for features that might be especially useful. In later sessions, design probes will include low-fidelity prototypes embodying features generated in earlier sessions. The end result will be an articulation of the special needs, barriers, and opportunities for using technology to help people in economically vulnerable communities to build, maintain, and use social capital to start moving up the economic ladder. The project will investigate how information and communication technology can help to create and maintain of social and economic bridges between individuals within specific economic communities and people who can provide access to employment opportunities outside of those communities.Broader Impacts: The project will have broad social impact by informing approaches to cultivating pathways to upward mobility in communities hit hardest by economic decline. If the research finds promising opportunities and surmountable barriers to the use of social networking tools and online labor markets, it will inform the design of future technologies and computer-mediated approaches to help these populations better prosper. If the research finds limited opportunities or insurmountable barriers, practitioners will know to look elsewhere to help vulnerable populations find essential socio-technical capital.